Race and capital punishment in the United States

Baldus studies

In 1983, David Baldus co-authored a study that found that capital punishment in Georgia since the decision in Furman v. Georgia was handed down 1972 had been applied unevenly across race. Specifically, his and his colleagues' study found that only 15 out of 246 murder cases (6%) where the victim was black resulted in a death sentence, as compared with 85 out of 348 (24%) of such cases when the victim was white. This study led to Warren McCleskey's death sentence being challenged due to allegations that it was racially biased, which, in turn, resulted in the Supreme Court's 1987 decision in McCleskey v. Kemp that statistical evidence of bias in the criminal justice system is insufficient to overturn an individual's sentence. In 1998, Baldus published another study which concluded that black defendants in certain types of murder cases in Philadelphia were almost four times as likely to be sentenced to death than were their white counterparts.

Kleck

In 1981, Gary Kleck published a literature review that found that blacks were less likely than whites to be sentenced to death or executed, except in the Southern United States. The same review found that cases with black victims were less likely than those with white victims to result in the imposition of a death sentence, possibly as a result of the devaluing of black crime victims.

Radelet

A 1981 study by Michael Radelet found that murder cases involving white victims were more likely to result in a death sentence than were those involving black victims, mainly because those accused of murdering whites were more likely to be indicted for first-degree murder. The same study found that after controlling for the race of the victim, there was no clear evidence that the race of the defendant predicted how likely they were to receive a death sentence.

Dwayne Smith

A 1987 study by M. Dwayne Smith of Tulane University found a racial bias in capital punishment cases in Louisiana, but only with regard to the race of the victim, not the offender.

Ekland-Olson

A 1988 study by Sheldon Ekland-Olson found that in the first decade after Furman, criminal cases in Texas involving white victims were more likely to result in a death sentence than those involving either black or Hispanic victims.

Government Accountability Office

A 1990 Government Accountability Office analysis of 28 studies found that murder cases with white victims were more likely than those with black victims to result in a death sentence in 82% of these studies. The report described this relationship as "remarkably consistent across data sets, states, data collection methods, and analytic techniques."

Sorensen & Wallace

A 1995 study by Jon Sorensen and Donald H. Wallace found evidence of a racial bias in capital punishment in Missouri, mainly in regards to the race of the victim. The study found that cases with white victims were more likely to result in death sentences, and that cases with black victims were less likely to result in such sentences. The study also reported that these disparities were largest when "prosecutors and jurors are freed from the seriousness of the cases to consider other factors." A 1999 study by the same authors found that murder cases with black defendants and white victims were more likely than those with any other combination of defendant and victim races to "result in first-degree murder charges, to be served notice of aggravating circumstances, and to proceed to capital trial."

Eberhardt

A 2006 study led by Jennifer Eberhardt found that defendants who looked more stereotypically black in death penalty cases with white victims were more likely to be sentenced to death, even after numerous other factors were controlled for.

Alesina and La Ferrera

A 2014 study by Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrera found evidence of racial bias in capital sentencing in that error rates tended to be higher in capital cases involving minority defendants and white victims. However, this pattern was only seen in Southern states.